


Poe Wrote On Both

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: When Is A Door Not A Door? [1]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Desire, possible consent issues, the imp of the perverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3328499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a 'b' in 'both', and an 'n' in 'neither'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poe Wrote On Both

**Author's Note:**

> The title and the summary are both solutions to Lewis Carroll's riddle 'How is a raven like a writing desk?', proposed, respectively, by Samuel Loyd and Aldous Huxley. The riddle in the story is from here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/tests/riddles.htm.  
> I am not associated with the production of Gotham, and this school is not associated with the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

When Oswald was a teenager, his mother enrolled in English classes. To him, it was pointless: she might not have spoken it very well, but she understood everything perfectly. People said things around you that they wouldn't ordinarily when they thought you were stupid; with her still-heavy accent and her wide, staring eyes, she was good at pretending to be stupid.  
Also, it was embarrassing. Having to walk her to and back from the high school three nights a week. Past the neighborhood kids sitting on the stoops in the evening, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Probably at him. Having to sit at the back of the room for the duration of class, watching his mother show off for the teacher and flirt with the men; being cornered, himself, afterward, by older women, who fluttered over him, smelling of cooking and heavy perfume, and told him what a good son he was to accompany his mother.  
He liked some of the assigned reading, though. His own English classes at school were useless to him, meant more to ensure that everyone graduated able to read than to inspire any great love of literacy. He didn't see the point: the kids who struggled still struggled, but with boredom as well as with their own difficulties; the kids who could have done well had nothing to interest them. If he had to read one more S.E. Hinton novel...  
But he liked what his mother was assigned, especially the Poe. It was gloomy and scary and romantic. His mother, of course, didn't get it.  
“What is this 'Imp of Perversion'? They shouldn't assign us such things.”  
“It's 'Imp of the Perverse', Mom,” he sighed.  
“What does it mean?”  
“I can't tell you that; you're supposed to figure it out on your own,” he replied prissily.  
“Nonsense. You need to help your mother.”  
He sighed again. “It means that even when you know that something is bad for you, you still want to do it, anyway, because it's bad for you.”  
“Oh. Like drinking, you mean? Or smoking?”  
He hated it when she acted like this with him. When she did it with other people, it was funny, and it was like watching a master actor at work, but why was she trying to work him? “No, Mom. It goes deeper than that. It's like-” he looked at the ceiling. How do you explain something that's already been explained perfectly, something that was illusive to begin with? “Well, look at the example that the narrator gives: he's talking about standing on a precipice-”  
“A what?”  
“A drop over a great height.”  
“Oh.”  
“And he describes feeling nauseous and scared, and he obviously doesn't want to jump, because he doesn't want to die, but the sicker he feels, the more he feels like he wants to jump, because he shouldn't want to.”  
“That's stupid,” she snorts.  
“It's not stupid. It's psychology.”  
“No. It's stupid. Real people don't feel like that. This is something writers make up to feel smart.”  
“Okay, Mom.”  
“I'm right. I know more about life than some man who wrote stories a hundred years ago.”  
“Yes, Mom.”  
“Explain it to me again.”  
“Okay...”  
It stuck with him. The Imp of the Perverse. He's older, now, so he understands it in a more intuitive way. You do the things you do because you want something to happen. There's nothing more desperate than boredom, and a person can get so desperately bored. Living a small life. There's nothing smaller than doing the right thing, the reasonable thing. Some people get help in life: they're rich, so they can buy things to entertain them; they're beautiful, so people flock to them, want to make things happen with them. The poor and the ugly, though, have to make do with crashing up against whatever people and events blunder into their lives- and make do with the consequences, good or bad.  
After the party, Oswald's feeling a little desperate. After he's seen off the band, and put the guy in the suit and his lady-friend into a cab, and sent the guy with the mohawk away with a couple of bottles of champagne, and pouted to Gabe for longer than is seemly- he's all alone. With this tickle in his nerves. There's alcohol in the club- so much alcohol- but he doesn't want to get dull and sleepy, end up falling asleep on a table for the cleaners to find the next afternoon. That had been embarrassing. He wants  
to crash up against something.  
Jim. If only Jim had come. None of this would have happened. Maroni wouldn't have dared to make his ridiculous threats. More people would have shown up. Drawn in by the light of Jim's- what? His uprightness, his certainty. Jim seems so certain of everything, all the time. It's the safety of being beautiful, Oswald supposes. If you're beautiful, people do things for you. Forgive you. Of anything. Oswald can forgive Jim. It must be hard, being so beautiful, and so- Oswald imagines- loved. People want things from you; you don't know who your true friends are. Oswald just needs to stay true, not abandon himself to pique, and Jim will see.  
What Oswald wants to do, really wants to do is make some great gesture. If Jim were a woman, Oswald could send him flowers- that would even work if Oswald were a woman, sending flowers to a man. Somehow, though, both of them being men forcibly deflowers their relationship. Oswald's never truly understood these conventions. Can't men like beautiful things? How the hell are you supposed to be nice to someone if you can't appeal to their love of beauty?  
What Oswald really wants to do is look for Jim. Just find him, wherever he is, and-  
That, he doesn't know. He can't get that far. Not without Jim, the tone of his voice and his little moody expressions, to guide Oswald. Jim needs to be worked. Not out of dishonesty, but because a man like that, with all of his certainty, will think that he knows what he wants until an alternative is presented. And that has to be done gently, with consideration.  
Yet, looking for Jim is precisely what Oswald's done, because here he is, back at the police station, reenacting the scene from earlier in the day, standing, scanning the crowd for the flash of gold that is Jim. It should be easier, because there's really no one there now, but somehow, it's harder. He stands, and interrogates each face, as though Jim might be somehow disguised, but he isn't. Jim is somewhere, but not there, and Oswald is lost.  
Here comes that little geek from earlier. Oswald frowns. Those weird, fishy eyes behind those ridiculous glasses, the smell of disinfectant and rubber wafting off of him. Oswald feels his frown deepen. He hasn't been drinking, but he must be impaired, because the antipathy is mellowing into the pleasure of familiarity. This strange man- Edward- must be taking on some of Jim's glamor, by extension; because, Oswald imagines, he was the last person Oswald saw before Jim lit up the mist of gray humanity around him.  
Like a dog on a scent, Oswald starts toward him, and Edward, for his part, turns toward Oswald, takes a few stork-like steps on his long legs, holding a bunch of files up to his chest.  
“Mr. Cobblepot,” he says.  
Oswald feels his head turn skeptically. It's been so long since someone called him anything other than 'Penguin'. “You're here late,” he says, soft at being taken off-guard.  
“I like to work late. I like the quiet.”  
“Where's Jim- I mean, Detective Gordon?”  
“Did you know that the word 'date', as in the fruit, comes from the Greek name for the date palm, Phoenix dactylifera. Which means, literally, 'Phoenician bearer of fingers'?”  
“No,” Oswald makes a face, “I didn't,” he looks at Edward, “Are you telling me that Detective Gordon is on a date?”  
“'Date', as in 'appointment', of course, comes from the Latin, 'datum'.”  
“Are you fucking with me?” he spits. He hasn't been drinking, but he's starting to get that strange, sparkling angry feeling. Not soft, at all.  
As though stricken, Edward dips away. “No! No. I wouldn't-”  
Oswald looks around. There's no one there, but that makes it worse. Anyone could be looking at him, and this is a stupid place for him to be. “Do you have an office?”  
“An office?” And Oswald can see the wheels spinning in Edward's head, putting together who knows what, but surely putting together something.  
“Yes.”  
“Yes. I do. An office...” he looks at Oswald, biting his lip, “Come with me.”  
He tucks himself into Edward's wake, and follows. Once they're away from the building's entrance, Edward turns to him, face lit up with expectation: “Are you in danger?”  
“What?”  
“Were you followed here? Is someone trying to kill you?”  
“Probably,” he mutters, then more brightly, “My life was threatened earlier this evening.”  
“Really?”  
“Yes.”  
“That is thrilling.”  
“Thrilling?” Oswald laughs. He can't help it. Edward is so fucking weird.  
“Horrible, yes,” Edward says, opening the door to his office, “but also... thrilling. Does that happen to you often?”  
Oswald shrugs. “Last week, I got locked in a car that was about to be compacted.”  
Edward lets out this little tittering laugh, and Oswald frowns, but less severely. It's hard to like Edward, but it's hard to dislike him, too. He's irritating in such a specific way. “Is there somewhere I could sit?”  
“Oh, yes.” Edward brings him a chair, and he sets himself down. It's late in the day, later than he's used to, and his bones feel like they've been crushed together.  
“Thank you,” he mutters, looks up at that strange face, luminous like Jim's, but lunar as opposed to solar. “So, Detective Gordon has a date?”  
“That was my surmise.”  
“It must have been an important engagement for him to turn down my invitation.” It's easy to talk- not to, but around Edward. He's like a bird in a decorative cage, engaging but harmless.  
“Oh?”  
“I invited him to a party, at my club. I own a club.”  
Edward shakes his head. “I don't get out very often.”  
“I don't know if it would be your type of place.” He means to sound haughty, but it just comes out apologetic. Why didn't Jim come?  
“A lot of places aren't my type of place.”  
“I can see that.” Again, apologetic. “Are you afraid of me?”  
The wheels start turning again, and Oswald can tell that Edward is searching desperately for the right answer; not because he fears upsetting Oswald, but because he doesn't want to get it wrong. In his own way, Edward's seeking certainty.  
“I don't think so,” Edward answers slowly, “I'm sure you want me to be, but I'm not.”  
Oswald stands. “If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you.”  
“I'm sure you would. Tell anyone about what?”  
When Oswald puts his hands on Edward, Edward just looks at him. As though this, too, were a problem that could be solved. But first, Edward has to process what's actually happening.  
“You think my life is thrilling?” Oswald asks, looking up, watching the weather in Edward's head drift over his face.  
“I think that anything anomalous is thrilling. The human brain is wired to notice strange occurrences and to extrapolate from their existence- it's how we learn, and discover- yet all most people want to do is avoid them.”  
“Yes,” Oswald says, an answer to a question that wasn't asked. He moves his hands from Edward's hips to the front of his pants.  
“That's,” Edward says, swallows, “That's anomalous.”  
“I'll bet.”  
As Oswald unzips his pants, Edward looks up. “You came here looking for Detective Gordon, but found me, instead, from which I can only infer-”  
“Shut up!” Oswald snaps, applies enough pressure to make Edward let out a little cry.  
“I meant no offense,” Edward gasps, wraps his hand around Oswald's wrist, “I, I understand.”  
“You understand?” Oswald loosens his grip, uses his other hand to hold Edward's at his wrist.  
Edward lets his eyes meet Oswald's. “I understand what it's like to want someone, to need them, and to not know the right way to make them understand. You do whatever you think would delight them,” here, Oswald reaches inside Edward's pants, brushes against him, “delight them- but, but it's like you speak different languages, and everything you say comes out wrong. You know you should stop, that you're humiliating yourself, that you're disgusting them, just making it worse, but you can't stop. It hurts, but it's almost like you like the pain.”  
“Yes,” Oswald says. Edward's holding Oswald against him, hands on his shoulders, the center of his back. It's close and it's warm, and sometimes, that's all you really want. Something shamefully small. But Edward's a small person- metaphorically speaking- so it's okay. Oswald disarrays him a little more, pushes a hand up under his shirt, feels his smooth skin goosepimple against Oswald's fingers.  
“Your hands are cold,” Edward gasps, “It's nice.”  
He moves his hand higher up Edward's body, along his spine, feels him jerk.  
“Wetter and wetter I get the more I dry. Ring me and I will cry.”  
“What?” Oswald laughs.  
“A towel. Though, of course, it's 'wring', with a 'w'. Not 'ring'. With an 'r'.”  
“You are wet,” Oswald says, takes his hand from under Edward's shirt, touches his face so that he'll incline his head. To kiss Oswald, he has to bend his knees; Oswald has to stand on his toes. Edward exhales a little 'Oh' into his mouth. Keeps his mouth against Oswald's as he comes, breathing out roughly through his nose, his hands wringing the fabric of Oswald's jacket.  
“Here.” He hands Edward a handkerchief. Edward's glasses are askew.  
“Thank you.”  
He bites his lip. His pulse is racing, and he can't stop himself from breathing heavily. He wants-  
He wants Jim. Wants him with such intensity that it wracks his body like physical effort. He looks at Edward- a mirror that's been shattered, but glued back together. It reflects something, but it's not what you want to see.  
“I don't usually do this kind of thing,” Edward says, looking at the handkerchief in his hand.  
“You don't say.”  
“I- I'm afraid I don't know what comes next.”  
Oswald takes off his jacket, folds it over the back of the chair. “Well, then, it'll just be a wonderful surprise for you.”


End file.
